Here are the Cro-Magnons:
"A Cro-Magnon guide went by across the snow-covered yard, a tall handsome fellow dressed rather like an Eskimo (why had romance never credited paleolithic man with enough sense to wear jacket, pants, and footgear in a glacial period?), his face painted, one of the steel knives he had earned at his belt."
-Poul Anderson, "Delenda Est" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, December 2010), pp. 173-228 AT 1, pp.173-174.
The combox discussion refers to the Neolithic.
See also Merchants And Languages and its combox.
Van Rijn converses with a non-human head on a screen in an:
"...eerie set of whistles and quavers."
-Poul Anderson, Satan's World IN Anderson, David Falkayn: Star Trader (Riverdale, NY, January 2009), pp. 235-424 AT VI, p. 275.
When his chief secretary asks him how many languages he speaks, he replies, as already noted in the combox:
"'Twenty-thirty bad. Ten-fifteen good. Anglic best of all.'" (ibid.)
(This is a joke. Van Rijn's dialogue is full of mispronunciations, malapropisms etc.)
I can't help referring back to the opening volumes of The Technic Civilization Saga without again appreciating the slow steady build-up of Poul Anderson's Technic History. The first six instalments introduce:
the Jerusalem Catholic Church
Ythrians
the Ythrian New Faith
Nicholas van Rijn
Adzel
David Falkayn
In the seventh, Falkayn works for van Rijn's company but has not yet met him. Only in the thirteenth instalment does van Rijn found his first trade pioneer crew consisting of Falkayn, Adzel and Chee Lan and only in the sixteenth, Satan's World, do van Rijn and the "trader team" share the spotlight. And, by that time, the crisis of the Polesotechnic League approaches.
The best of the future history series.
No comments:
Post a Comment